Every once in awhile a window opens and shows us the dark, illogical souls of the bureaucrats in the climate cabal. This is one of those times.
Regardless of whether or not scientists are wrong on global warming, the European Union is pursuing the correct energy policies even if they lead to higher prices, Europe’s climate commissioner has said.
There’s more.
Let’s say that science, some decades from now, said ‘we were wrong, it was not about climate’, would it not in any case have been good to do many of things you have to do in order to combat climate change?.
These are the views of the EU climate commissioner, Connie Hedegaard.
Read it all here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10313261/EU-policy-on-climate-change-is-right-even-if-science-was-wrong-says-commissioner.html
h/t to Dennis Wingo, and many others.
Hal44 says:
September 17, 2013 at 6:34 am
The motto of the World’s Leftists in a nutshell, “Even if the FACTS prove we wrong about the issue, we were still morally correct in pursuing it.”
“Because we’re good people and we care!” I just heard this proclamation made by one of the elected representatives successfully recalled in Colorado, to her supporters. It’s an insult to baby talk!
This is another example that justifies the relavance of my favourite quote; rare wisdom and insight as to the manner in which we should all live our lives and a virtue universally lacking in all politicians.
Some 200 years ago the poet and philosopher, William Blake said: ” He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.”
The Left made this argument starting in the 1960’s, to stop using our current energy forms, and lost. Rather than develop better arguments, they turned a piece of scientific speculation into a Big Lie, and are intent on using that Big Lie to jam their agenda down our throats.
With motor fuel taxes as high as they are in the EU, is it so surprising to see the same attitude applied to non-market electric power pricing?
Here is one question you will never hear at a presidential campaign debate. “If one or more key parts of human-caused global warming science are found not to be not true, how will you sir/madam respond to that news for policy purposes?” Such openness and plain talk is much too dangerous for public consumption. It takes their eyes off the programmed beauty pageant and debate styles in such events.
Working together, Hedegaard and Waterfield draw logically improper conclusions from equivocations through use of the polysemic terms “scientific,” “predictions,” and “science.”
SideShowBob:
Wind & solar are still heavily subsidized. When & if they ever become competitively economical & reliable with other power sources, they will be adopted without subsidies. But today wind is just as dependent upon subsidies as when the improved models of Chinese mills started blighting the shores of the US. Solar has improved a bit, but is still not competitive in industrial applications, & is still subsidized for domestic use.
While overstating the environmental hazards of coal, which are easily remedied at minimal cost, you neglect the horrific environmental consequences of wind & solar. Mills & panels are made in China at terrible cost to the environment there, & installed in the US & elsewhere at further degradation. I live surrounded by windmills, so have experienced directly the devastation they wreak among birds & bats, leading to an increase in insects, requiring greater use of insecticides. Locally, they also harm burrowing creatures & the roads & concrete bases disrupt other wild animals’ lives.
In the Pacific NW, we have some coal power to back up the forests of windmills, but mainly rely on truly renewable hydro. The needs of wind power cause us to misuse our hydro, with negative effects on salmon, steelhead trout & sturgeon. But enviro-whackos here don’t regard hydro as green, & want to take out the dams that generate so much power so cheaply & have attracted industry here for decades, to include less polluting business like Google.
If you want energy independence in Germany, return to your own coal & gas reserves & those of your EU neighbors. Or buy clean coal or LNG from America. It’s still much cheaper than wind & solar in your country. Support a gas pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia and Turkey to free yourselves from reliance on Russian gas (there are already oil pipelines).
http://www.euractiv.com/energy/putin-fails-undermine-azerbaijan-news-529806
“Every once in awhile a window opens and shows us the dark, illogical souls of the bureaucrats in the climate cabal.”
Calling their souls dark and illogical is like calling Stalin “naughty.”
jorgekafkazar says:
September 17, 2013 at 10:38 am
Maybe they’re not illogical if CACA is & always has been a stalking horse for Communism. Connie may belong to a Center-Right party, but in her heart she must be a committed statist.
I have heard apologists high & low make the same argument for at least two decades now with regard to CACA. They’re the same people & their ideological descendants who blamed the US for the Cold War & everything else they found unspeakably evil in the post-War world. After the fall of the Berlin Wall & the USSR, former Reds turned Watermelon in droves, less honest versions of their previous avatars.
SideShowBob is a character from the animated series “The Simpsons” who pursues his goals through lies, trickery, deceit and misinformation. His appearance in this forum seems to be in character.
@ur momisugly rogerknights says:
September 17, 2013 at 7:57 am “Solar and wind provide electric power and thus must be compared to natural gas, nuclear, or coal”
Actually, it is even worse than that. Yes, solar and wind produce electricity, but the power they produce is qualitatively different from the power produced by gas, nuclear, coal or hydro. Solar and wind are not only intermittent, but are intermittent in an unpredictable way. Suppose I have two pieces of property, one with a strong artesian well on it, and the other with an intermittent seeping spring. Which property is more desirable, more valuable?
Same thing with solar and wind energy.
Wa? Eco-nomics? Watt’s to understand? Take from the rich (that is, people who don’t contribute to your political party) and give to the more deserving (those whose votes you can buy). What more is there to understand?
SideShowBob says: @ur momisugly September 17, 2013 at 1:34 am
…..We’re fast moving to a situation were renewables are cheaper than burning coal, (not even including the death and lung disease from particulate pollution) …..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You may be able to sell that idiotic statement to the non-scientists/engineers but it is not going to get you any where at a website full of people who think instead of emote.
I suggest you read all the comments on the article, Claim: Let’s put batteries on wind and solar farms, from a week ago so we do not waste everyone’s time repeating ourselves. Than you can come back here with some thing sensible to say.
Latimer Alder says: @ur momisugly September 17, 2013 at 3:43 am
@ur momisuglyrichardscourtenay
Brilliantly put! Definitely the best way I have ever heard it described. My quote of the year (so far).
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Agreed. His summation is definitely a keeper.
@ur momisugly milodonharlani & kadaka (KD Knoebel) & richardscourtney
“you neglect the horrific environmental consequences of wind & solar.”
Honesty! What planet are you living on… you’re all a bunch of shrill hypocrisy for the coal industry,
you say remove the subsidies for renewables (which I’m all for BTW as they affect the competitiveness of my business) but fossil fuels have and are still heavily subsidized all around the world!
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Subsidies-For-Oil-Gas-Nuclear-vs.-Renewables
This woman is even stupider than she looks!! Is that even possible? Europe is doomed to another dark age I fear.
Of course I’m referring to the EU Climate commissioner.
SideShowBob:
At September 17, 2013 at 3:42 pm you ask me and others
We are on planet Earth. You seem to be on some planet in an alternative universe.
The fossil fuel industries have lowered tax burdens. If you want to call that a “subsidy” then feel free, but wind and solar cost at least 5 times as much and get actual subsidies.
The use of fossil fuels has done more to benefit human kind than anything else since the invention of agriculture. This is because it has released us from the energy poverty of wind, solar and muscle (animal and slave) power. Human health, life expectancy and leisure have all increased with resulting increase to art, philosophy and knowledge. And the environment has benefited enormously.
That improvement was provided by use of fossil fuels and is sustained by use of fossil fuels. The developing world wants those benefits, too.
If you don’t want those benefits then fine: you swap places with somebody living in a mud hut and doing their cooking on a fire in the middle of the hut with the fire fueled by the wood and dung collected each morning.
We don’t want to lose those benefits: we want to enable those now living in mud huts to get those benefits, too.
Richard
milodonharlani says: September 17, 2013 at 10:47 am
“They’re the same people & their ideological descendants who blamed the US for the Cold War & everything else they found unspeakably evil in the post-War world. After the fall of the Berlin Wall & the USSR, former Reds turned Watermelon in droves, less honest versions of their previous avatars.:
Hello Milodon,,
Here is some authoritative support for you “watermelon” hypo, from Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace.
Excerpt – a history of the rise of eco-extremism, written in 1994 by Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace.
http://www.greenspirit.com/key_issues/the_log.cfm?booknum=12&page=3
The Rise of Eco-Extremism
Two profound events triggered the split between those advocating a pragmatic or “liberal” approach to ecology and the new “zero-tolerance” attitude of the extremists. The first event, mentioned previously, was the widespread adoption of the environmental agenda by the mainstream of business and government. This left environmentalists with the choice of either being drawn into collaboration with their former “enemies” or of taking ever more extreme positions. Many environmentalists chose the latter route. They rejected the concept of “sustainable development” and took a strong “anti-development” stance.
Surprisingly enough the second event that caused the environmental movement to veer to the left was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly the international peace movement had a lot less to do. Pro-Soviet groups in the West were discredited. Many of their members moved into the environmental movement bringing with them their eco-Marxism and pro-Sandinista sentiments.
These factors have contributed to a new variant of the environmental movement that is so extreme that many people, including myself, believe its agenda is a greater threat to the global environment than that posed by mainstream society. Some of the features of eco-extremism are:
• It is anti-human. The human species is characterized as a “cancer” on the face of the earth. The extremists perpetuate the belief that all human activity is negative whereas the rest of nature is good. This results in alienation from nature and subverts the most important lesson of ecology; that we are all part of nature and interdependent with it. This aspect of environmental extremism leads to disdain and disrespect for fellow humans and the belief that it would be “good” if a disease such as AIDS were to wipe out most of the population.
• It is anti-technology and anti-science. Eco-extremists dream of returning to some kind of technologically primitive society. Horse-logging is the only kind of forestry they can fully support. All large machines are seen as inherently destructive and “unnatural’. The Sierra Club’s recent book, “Clearcut: the Tradgedy of Industrial Forestry”, is an excellent example of this perspective. “Western industrial society” is rejected in its entirety as is nearly every known forestry system including shelterwood, seed tree and small group selection. The word “Nature” is capitalized every time it is used and we are encouraged to “find our place” in the world through “shamanic journeying” and “swaying with the trees”. Science is invoked only as a means of justifying the adoption of beliefs that have no basis in science to begin with.
• It is anti-organization. Environmental extremists tend to expect the whole world to adopt anarchism as the model for individual behavior. This is expressed in their dislike of national governments, multinational corporations, and large institutions of all kinds. It would seem that this critique applies to all organizations except the environmental movement itself. Corporations are critisized for taking profits made in one country and investing them in other countries, this being proof that they have no “allegiance” to local communities. Where is the international environmental movements allegiance to local communities? How much of the money raised in the name of aboriginal peoples has been distributed to them? How much is dedicated to helping loggers thrown out of work by environmental campaigns? How much to research silvicultural systems that are environmentally and economically superior?
• It is anti-trade. Eco-extremists are not only opposed to “free trade” but to international trade in general. This is based on the belief that each “bioregion” should be self-sufficient in all its material needs. If it’s too cold to grow bananas – – too bad. Certainly anyone who studies ecology comes to realize the importance of natural geographic units such as watersheds, islands, and estuaries. As foolish as it is to ignore ecosystems it is adsurd to put fences around them as if they were independent of their neighbours. In its extreme version, bioregionalism is just another form of ultra-nationalism and gives rise to the same excesses of intolerance and xenophobia.
• It is anti-free enterprise. Despite the fact that communism and state socialism has failed, eco-extremists are basically anti-business. They dislike “competition” and are definitely opposed to profits. Anyone engaging in private business, particularly if they are sucessful, is characterized as greedy and lacking in morality. The extremists do not seem to find it necessary to put forward an alternative system of organization that would prove efficient at meeting the material needs of society. They are content to set themselves up as the critics of international free enterprise while offering nothing but idealistic platitudes in its place.
• It is anti-democratic. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of radical environmentalism. The very foundation of our society, liberal representative democracy, is rejected as being too “human-centered”. In the name of “speaking for the trees and other species” we are faced with a movement that would usher in an era of eco-fascism. The “planetary police” would “answer to no one but Mother Earth herself”.
• It is basically anti-civilization. In its essence, eco-extremism rejects virtually everything about modern life. We are told that nothing short of returning to primitive tribal society can save the earth from ecological collapse. No more cities, no more airplanes, no more polyester suits. It is a naive vision of a return to the Garden of Eden.
Regards, Allan
From SideShowBob on September 17, 2013 at 6:50 am:
Projections of future costs have already been done by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), as can be found here: Levelized Cost of New Generation Resources in the Annual Energy Outlook 2013. Full AEO report (Early Release) here.
Sources are divided into “Dispatchable” and “Non-Dispatchable”:
Since solar and wind are there when they’re there and not necessarily there when you need them, they are non-dispatchable, and really shouldn’t be compared to dependable sources like coal, nuclear, and natural gas.
The costs are expressed as 2011 dollars per megawatt, for facilities going online in 2018 as that figures in the lead time for construction. Less than 2018 would have to include facilities currently under construction.
Solar thermal is the clear winner. Costs and sources, see document for notes and caveats:
$261.5 Solar Thermal ND
$221.5 Wind-Offshore ND
$144.3 Solar PV ND
$135.5 Advanced Coal with CCS D
$130.3 Natural Gas-Conventional Combustion Turbine D
$123.0 Advanced Coal D
$111.0 Biomass D
$108.4 Advanced Nuclear D
$104.6 Natural Gas-Advanced Combustion Turbine D
$100.1 Conventional Coal D
$093.4 Natural Gas-Advanced Combined Cycle with CCS D
$090.3 Hydro ND
$089.6 Geothermal D
$086.6 Wind ND
$067.1 Natural Gas-Conventional Combined Cycle D
$065.6 Natural Gas-Advanced Combined Cycle D
Ordinary wind beats coal, if you don’t mind the trade-offs. But all solar is lousy.
And those are national averages, as shown in Table 2 there is considerable regional variation. Solar is only good enough in sunny southern regions, usable wind is limited.
Plus something in the math conflicts with reality.
Namely, where are the wind farms that last 30 years without turbine replacement? It hasn’t been happening. Thus turbine replacement also needs to be figured in, you’ll have to practically rebuild the installation at least once.
Don’t forget the cost of backup generation.
It also turns out there are additional costs added into coal, as in a carbon tax:
$15 a metric ton is pretty high. At the most recent Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) auction on Sept 4, allowances went for a paltry $2.67 a ton (American short ton, metric tonne, doesn’t say), way down from the $3.21 of the June auction. The RGGI is a cap-and-trade system affecting nine Northeastern member states, since New Jersey left in 2011.
But it was higher in California’s auction, again signaling their desire to tax themselves out of financial existence:
So the EIA figures include a cost for coal that is likely to never materialize, at least outside of a certain bankrupt failed socialized state, while leaving out expected costs for wind that coal won’t have.
And utility-scale solar is still lousy.
Patrick Moore’s essay (sub-heading “the Rise of Eco-Extremism”) is apparently no longer available at the above address.
It appears Moore has retired and his company and website have evolved.
Here is a more recent interview with Moore on the same topic as the above.
http://www.brucegoldfarb.com/moore.htm
Moore: My education is in science. There isn’t enough science in Greenpeace.
First they drifted into extremism because all their reasonable positions were adopted. They decided that rather than joining the sustainable development consensus, the multi-stakeholder process to find solutions, that they were going to remain more or less on the other side, be a watchdog, be in a confrontational and adversarial position. Much of the rest of the environmental movement has followed suit.
Secondly, following the falling of the Berlin wall, and the end of the peace movement, and the end of radical socialist politics in the labor and women’s movement, an awful lot of those people drifted into environmentalism. It’s been highjacked by political and social activists who are using environmental rhetoric to cloak agendas that have more to do with anti-corporate and class warfare than they do with ecology or saving the environment.
The World Trade Organization riot in Seattle was the culmination of that phenomenon, where environmentalism is seen as one and the same with anti-globalization. I grew up with an environmental movement where Barbara Ward, who wrote Spaceship Earth, was our hero. And she believed that there is one world and there should be one human family. To me, free trade and globalization is part of the expression of one world family. I don’t see how anti-globalization fits in with ecology.
BG: Does it pain you to be portrayed as a traitor?
Moore: Oh fine, if that’s the best they can do. I’m interested in a discussion of the issues, and I place myself in fora all the time at universities and conferences where I can be challenged and discuss those issues, and I really enjoy that.
Character assassination, discrediting people, that’s an old trick that doesn’t work with me very well. It’s just water off a duck’s back. I haven’t betrayed anybody.
[Golden rice inventor Ingo] Potrykus has said you guys will be guilty of crimes against humanity if you continue along these lines. And I have to agree with that. What pains me is seeing the organization I helped create go off on such a wrong track. Rather than discrediting golden rice, they should be raising millions of dollars to address the problem it is intended to solve.
Side show bob says….you are dead wrong. Wind power does not work without conventional power also . 2 how much money does wind make? None. It costs more than any other energy source
How much land is being destroyed by these do nothing blowhardlies ? Take your foolish show elsewhere. The people here are too smart for your b.s.
More Moore:
The title of his above 1994 essay is “Hard Choices for the Environmental Movement”, of which “The Rise of Eco-Extremism” was a sub-heading.
I bellieve this is the Introduction:
More than twenty years ago I was one of a dozen or so activists who founded Greenpeace in the basement of the Unitarian Church in Vancouver. The Vietnam war was raging and nuclear holocaust seemed closer every day. We linked peace, ecology, and a talent for media communications and went on to build the world’s largest environmental activist organization. By 1986 Greenpeace was established in 26 countries and had an income of over $100 million per year.
…
Since its founding in the late 60’s the modern environmental movement had created a vision that was international in scope and had room for people of all political persuasions. We prided ourselves in subscribing to a philosophy that was “trans-political, trans-ideological, and trans-national” in character. For Greenpeace, the Cree legend “Warriors of the Rainbow” referred to people of all colors and creeds, working together for a greener planet. The traditional sharp division between left and right was rendered meaningless by the common desire to protect our life support systems. Violence against people and property were the only taboos. Non-violent direct action and peaceful civil disobedience were the hallmarks of the movement. Truth mattered and science was respected for the knowledge it brought to the debate.
Now this broad-based vision is challenged by a new philosophy of radical environmentalism. In the name of “deep ecology” many environmentalists have taken a sharp turn to the ultra-left, ushering in a mood of extremism and intolerance. As a clear signal of this new agenda, in 1990 Greenpeace called for a “grassroots revolution against pragmatism and compromise”.
…
Two profound events triggered the split between those advocating a pragmatic or “liberal” approach to ecology and the new “zero-tolerance” attitude of the extremists. The first event, mentioned previously, was the widespread adoption of the environmental agenda by the mainstream of business and government. This left environmentalists with the choice of either being drawn into collaboration with their former “enemies” or of taking ever more extreme positions. Many environmentalists chose the latter route. They rejected the concept of “sustainable development” and took a strong “anti-development” stance.
Surprisingly enough the second event that caused the environmental movement to veer to the left was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly the international peace movement had a lot less to do. Pro-Soviet groups in the West were discredited. Many of their members moved into the environmental movement bringing with them their eco-Marxism and pro-Sandinista sentiments.
These factors have contributed to a new variant of the environmental movement that is so extreme that many people, including myself, believe its agenda is a greater threat to the global environment than that posed by mainstream society.
Allan MacRae says:
September 17, 2013 at 4:56 pm
I’ve seen him decry the hijacking of real environmental concern by unrepentant Reds looking for a new horse upon which to ride roughshod over humanity.
I didn’t agree with him about how to forestall nuclear war (“Nuclear Winter” was an out of town try-out for CACA, with many of the same players), but he has always been honest.
Allan MacRae says:
September 17, 2013 at 4:56 pm
It is a naive vision of a return to the Garden of Eden.
============
Naked, Adam and Eve would have quickly died of exposure unless the Garden of Eden was quite a bit warmer than the 58F/15C average temperature of the earth today.
A naked human cannot survive if the average temperature is less than 82F/28C. Below that, we radiate more energy than we can generate from food (about 150 watts).
Almost nowhere outside of tropical jungles is the average temperature this high. And in the tropical jungle the mosquito and the biting fly make quick work of the naked human. If starvation doesn’t finish you off first.
So, the lesson is that without global warming, the Garden of Eden is a death trap.